Hey Jude
by The Knife In Your Side
Summary: Jude is a dreamer. A stargazer. A knowledge-seeker. A strange girl with a VW Kombi, a telescope and too many books to manage. A life far from conventional by human standards, but for people like her... well, she knows no different. It's just how her world works; alone but not lonely, learning and living and wondering... the only problem? Her tail.


**Wow another story about foxes, I truly am obsessed. I've always wanted to write a story about a Kitsune though, so here we go.**

**This story is meant to express my extreme outward love for the sixties and seventies. It will be entirely apparent.**

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_"And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,_

_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders,_

_For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool,_

_By making his world a little colder,"_

_–The Beatles 'Hey Jude'_

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_Chapter One:_

People didn't particularly care for the Volkswagen T2 Kombi parked in the street as such; they assumed it to be owned by drifter, an elderly man with long grimy hair who didn't notice when the sixties and seventies had rolled to a close long ago. And it's not like anybody could look inside, although some still did try, squinting right through the cracks of the drawn flowery orange curtains (I believe most of the kid's curiosity was because of the interesting telescope secured to the roof). The paint job was a deep forest green that may have been sleek and glossy a few decades ago, showing clear signs of rust and age with a corny bumper sticker for almost every state in America, some twice.

Why this strange van had hit Beacon Hills, California nobody really knew – nobody really cared. The town wasn't out of the ordinary in any way that was commonly known by the people, and they sure didn't plan on chopping down the forest for housing development– so what was the van doing there? What was its divine purpose?

Well, I can definitely say it isn't owned by a greasy-haired man, or at least, hadn't been for a very long time. Jude Bradbury was quite different from that, and although she recycled when possible, wasn't all that anal about it.

And to her, that van was more than a vehicle introduced in the 1950's by a German car company that came into popularity during the counterculture movement of the 1960's. No, to her it was home. A place where Jude could do what she liked, where she could read in peace, plan out her route, the next town to hit. A place where she didn't have to hide her brush tail that was extremely hard to hide in public.

Yes, _tail_. I did say tail – but more on that later.

The interior of the van was cramped, stripped of all seats aside from the front and passenger. A thin bed consisting of an old mattress smelling of dust motes lay over the top of draws filled with everything from jars of honey from a farm a few states over too rarely used car jumps. But mainly the space was occupied by books. Books in cupboards and in crates, mixed in with her cassette tapes and sitting on the dashboard, books hidden in every nook and cranny that could hold them while she drove down bumpy dirt back roads. On the inner roof, it was covered with maps all pinned up with red pins and her path trailed by red string – places she's been, places she wants to go – and right in the middle her final destination…

Okay, maybe I should explain Jude's tail now.

And maybe also why a girl who only recently turned seventeen has been on a seven year road trip around America. Yes, I dare say the knowing and understanding of such information would be productive for you in the understanding of this story.

The single most important pin on that board, with a single address scrawled in her atrocious cursive handwriting. Months of meditation and dream walking to single down the every so elusive 'California' of her original dream to an actual town and an actual name; Lahey.

And even through everything – that entire ordeal – Jude refused to pick up her phone and dial _his_ number. She did not need her brothers help, they weren't even supposed to be in contact with each other… and by God, the _embarrassment_! How could she face any other of her kind! It'd been five months! _Five months_! And she hadn't found her nameless person yet… the shame of it! She could imagine Rory laughing through the mobile, before (of course) agreeing to help, and then teasing her every step of the way until he was found.

But still, with a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders, Jude smiled to herself. She'd figured it out, all on her own, like she always did.

Pulling on her last pair of battered jeans and an old Rolling Stones shirt, she knelled on the ground turning her head to see the brush tail a similar auburn to the mess of unkempt curls on her hair, sticking right out of the slit in her denims. Quickly she wrapped a hoodie around her wait to conceal it, it was risky yes, but Jude couldn't be bothered wither her usual taping and hiding away.

Sliding open the side door to the van, she clutched the washing basket and rested it against her hip, locking the car behind her as she walked up the street to the coin laundry, spare change rattling in her pocket.

Pushing open the door she heard a ring, the room was empty as were the lines of washing machines and dryers. The desk seemed vacant, so she decided it didn't matter and begun, not bothering to separate darks from lights – they were all pretty dark anyway. Although she did love light colours, they weren't vert suited for her way on life.

Humming away to whatever was playing on the radio – Radiohead I think it was – Jude slid the coins into the slot and started the washing. As nobody was here, she didn't trust leaving her washing alone – they were her only clothes. So sitting on the bench (tail curled around her waist beneath the hoodie) with her back to the door, Jude picked up her book that'd been tucked under her arm and began to read.

Time passed in a strange endlessly smooth motion while her mind was absorbed by the ink staining the pages, nimble fingers turning each with a certain rabid curiosity to what would come next.

I guess it was instinct, to want to know all with such a passion that if she simply ceased learning, there was a high chance she'd drive herself barmy. It was a part of who she was – _what_ she was. The Kitsune are the great knowledge seekers of the world, and her identity as an Inari (rather than the mischievous Yako like her brother) only solidified that fact.

It was her duty as one of the were-fox to learn everything possible, so when she died, her spirit would join the constellation _Vulpecula_ in the night sky. It was doubtful she'd ever be a star, very few gained enough knowledge in their lifetime to become stars, and so far Jude was failing at her job as guide to this near-nameless human who probably (hopefully) needed her help.

Jude had been so absorbed in her novel accompanied by the low swashing of working washing machines, that she didn't even notice when the bell rang again, signifying another entering the coin laundry.

There was a tap on her shoulder and she jumped slightly, "Pardon?"

"Your washing is done… it looks like it was finished a while ago," the voice spoke… intriguingly familiar to her.

She realised the sound had been coming from different machines and her clothes had in actual fact been sitting still for a while, and saw that she'd almost reached the end of her book also.

"Oh, I'm very sorry," Jude smiles meekly, looking up at the dark haired boy in the dark coat. He was thin and pale with a bruised and blackened eye. He looked tired and worn down, but it didn't stop his from mustering the faintest of smiles at her, "I forget that I'm not in the book sometimes,"

He nodded, "What's it you're reading?"

Jude slid in her book mark, and stood to face him properly, "'A Brief History of Time' by Steven Hawking,"

"He still alive?" the strange boy looked at her, a bemused look on his face.

She shrugged, "Well yes, but his life to date has been eventful enough to warrant a biography. Did you know he was meant to die–"

"At the age of twenty-one, yeah, I know," he smirked, folding his hands across his chest.

"Actually it was twenty-three, he was diagnosed at twenty-one and told he had two years left – which was graciously wrong given he's seventy-one currently, but such was medical science back in 1963, I guess…" Jude explained, and immediately internally scolded herself. It was a bad habit, correcting everybody's mistakes. Rude, as her brother put it. A very sure way to maximise her lack of friends, which was naught and apparently staying there, "Sorry… I tend to ramble sometimes. Bad habit,"

He smiles; still minute but happier than the last, "It's okay… you a fan of his?"

Jude shrugs, "He's interesting, given the amount he's achieved with motor neuron disease, which is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and I imagine quite difficult to live with, let alone succeeded to become a renowned theoretical physicist and astrologist. I like the collaboration he did with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularities theorems in the framework of general relativity more though… apologies, I'm doing it again,"

The dark haired boy sighed, "Like I said, it's okay," and he began filling the washing machine with dark clothing. The curious girl thought she saw a glimpse of blood on some of the shirts, but shrugged it off as none of her business. It'd probably been an accident anyway, a slip of the knife while chopping vegetables or something mundane like that, and so she brushed it aside.

Pulling her clothing out of the washer Jude loaded the dryer and sat back down on the bench. He sat beside me. The two were quiet.

They sat like that for a long while; Jude returning to her book, adamant on finishing it and the mystery boy softly tapping his grey converse to whatever song he listened to on the iPod safely tucked away in his coat. A comfortable silence settled as the seconds ticked by on the clock.

Soon her fingers found the final page, much the same as the others with the contrasting black ink on a pale paper, only as the final words drifted through her mind and a deep longing took seed as it did with every ending page.

"_If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God."_

"Pardon?" the boy beside her asked, shocking the girl back into reality for the second time today.

Jude cursed herself, "Did I really just say that out loud?"

"Yeah, I believe you did," he chuckled softly, dark eyes watching her.

Jude noticed her final spin coming to an end and knelt down. She begun taking the minute amount of washing from the dryer and stuffed it into a bag without any care for folding.

"It's the last line," She breathed, standing back up and feeling the usual ache of endings. The yearning feeling pulling from the pits of her stomach, wishing to forget so she could experience it all again, "It's very beautiful don't you think? '_If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God'._ There's something wonderful about it,"

He frowned, eyes growing darker, "I don't really believe in God. Too many horrible things in the world for him to exist,"

Jude shrugs, "Neither do I, but the concept is quite amazing if you think about. A single entity creating something with so many beautiful possibilities… to be able to believe it whole heartedly would be quite a blessing,"

"Maybe."

The tone of this voice was hard, leaning on fierce, but then he took a breath and relaxed himself, unclenching his fists and looking back to her with lighter eyes than before.

"What was the question? '_If we find the answer to that'_ – what was asked?" he looked genuinely curious.

Jude smiled mischievously, holding the book out to him, "Read it and find out,"

He slipped the novel from her grip, with surprised eyes, "Thank you,"

The girl just grinned and headed towards the door, hearing the bell jingle as she pushed it open, "My name is Jude by the way, you?"

"Isaac. I'm Isaac."

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**Thanks for reading!**


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